Education reform is increasingly portrayed as a means to improve a nation's global competitiveness as measured by its performance in international league tables of pupil achievement. This has created a demand for comparative research which identifies "what works" in high-performing school systems. A diverse array of consultancies, thinks…

Educational scholars, particularly those working in comparative education, have largely failed to recognise, let alone discuss, the impending finite-ness of global resources. The field continues to operate on an assumption of infinite resources, an implicit cultural horizon in place since at least the Western Enlightenment. It has missed the…

Education reforms in England are increasingly justified by borrowing "best practices" of high-performing East Asian societies, including Hong Kong, Singapore and Shanghai. However, taking the reforms of school accountability as an illustrative example, this article argues that there are serious variations between England and its East…

In the current context of intensified moves towards educational deregulation, the configuration of the Italian middle school and its relationship to education governance is an interesting case. Historically, it represents a unique example of the successful "decision-making" model of the welfarist era. Despite some internal constraints,…

The PISA survey influences educational policies through an international competitive process which is not wholly rationally-oriented. Firstly, PISA league tables act normatively upon the definition of formal educational aims while the survey tests cannot evaluate the educational systems' relative strengths with regards to such aims. We argue that…

Human capital and functionalist paradigms underpin the stance taken by most governments to education policy. These models have also had a profound effect upon the determination of education priorities in the poorest states and, indeed, upon aid policy. This paper argues, on the basis of evidence from the papers in this volume and from the wider…

This paper explores changing language education policies and implementation processes in Central/Eastern Europe. There are conflicting language policy orientations that govern the scene, resulting from post-independence attempts on the one hand to strengthen the position of the national (state) language, and on the other to function as EU member…

Explains a theoretical framework for interpreting educational policy-making and, on the basis of that framework, identifies educational policy makers and policy changes in Hungary in the 1960s and 1970s. Tests the theory by examining controversies about secondary education and the structure of the educational system. (JHZ)

Examines the local conditions that enabled the development and installation of the New Zealand model of neoliberalism and new public management, characteristics that made it desirable and that would allow its incorporation at a global level, and how implementation was accomplished. Draws implications for the relationship between comparative…

Western education systems have become globally embedded, and comparative education, by focusing on the delivery model of education, reinforces the status quo. A neo-comparative education would focus on learning and its relationship with culture as a means of understanding how individuals can be encouraged to engage with the many emerging forms of…

Describes the present adult education landscape in Hong Kong. Explores four scenarios for Hong Kong's future arising from positive and negative outcomes in the economy and human rights. Suggests that, ironically, returning Hong Kong to a Marxist state will jeopardize neo-Marxist (critical, emancipatory) approaches to adult education because of…

Past "elitist" development efforts modeled on Western academic education have failed to meet manpower needs but resist change due to popular preference for "modern" occupations. A new development strategy providing universal basic education and improved general living standards is needed. (Part of a theme issue on Third World educational…

An unintended outcome of Swedish higher education reform, and one detrimental to academic work, was that the more numerous the reforms, the larger the size of the coordinating bodies above the local units and the more rapid the growth in bureaucratic personnel within local institutions of the higher education system. (MH)